COMMUNITY projects in Gwent are set to benefit from more than £97,000 from a new cashback scheme, which claims back assets from criminals.

Three projects, chosen by public vote, will receive a total of £97,749 from the community cashback scheme, which sees money from criminals’ seized assets used to fund worthwhile community projects.

A total of £4 million will be given out nationally to a total of 269 projects.

This money comes from crimes including drug and people trafficking, money laundering, burglaries and fraud.

'Street Fix,' which is made up of more than 40 different projects across all five local authorities was awarded a total of £80,176.

One of the projects to benefit from this is the Urban Arts project in Bettws, Newport.

Darren Young, 20, came up with the project as he said there was nothing to do on the estate for people of his age.

He was in and out of trouble after being excluded from Bettws High School when he was 14, spending his time drinking on the streets of Bettws, causing criminal damage and committing public order offences.

He spent five months in a Young Offenders’ Institute and was released in December.

It was when Darren was arrested again a few months ago, that things started to changed for him and he came up with the idea of Urban Arts.

This will include music production, rapping, dance, freerunning, football, graffiti wars and employment advice.

These sessions will run at Bettws Day Centre two nights a week.

The project was awarded £2,700 which will be used for equipment, leaflets and posters and Darren is going to add to this with his own fundraising.

He said this is a way of bringing people out of crime and into the community.

Darren has just got his first full-time job and wants to extend the project in the future to other parts of Newport.

BLOB For more information about Urban Arts, email youth.connect@ymail.com The Pill Bank Neighbourhood Watch Alley Gate Scheme was given £12,500, and Beating Fear, Keeping Safe in Blaenau Gwent was awarded just over £5,000.

A pilot project, the alley gate scheme will fund the installation of two alley gates in an area where there is a high level of prostitution and drugs use.

Beating Fear, Keeping Safe will use its money to develop awareness packs for schools about bullying and discrimination against people with learning difficulties.